Daniel Pedersen

TNI-BCN Burma policy briefing No. 5
February 2011

Following the shake-up of Burmese politics last year, the country’s military leaders now face the challenge of introducing a new system while ethnic tensions and exclusions remain.

Burma remains a land in ethnic crisis and political transition. In 2010 the military State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) laid out the landscape for a new era of parliamentary government. In 2011 the authorities face the challenge of introducing the new political system. Ethnic divisions and political exclusions, however, are emerging in national politics, threatening a new cycle of impasse and conflict.
A critical moment is approaching. A new political system is being introduced, and progressive decisions can yet be made. But uncertainty is increasing. Will the new government be the SPDC in new guise or will it be a platform from which ethnic peace and multi-party democracy can truly spread? The stakes could not be higher. The decisions made by Burma’s leaders in the coming year could well decide the country’s future for a generation Ethnic Politics in Burma: The Time for Solutions. Burma Policy Briefing Nr 5

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Thai officials order relief organisations not to support forces fighting Burma’s junta

Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot

The United Nations and organisations working along the Thai-Burma border providing relief for refugees from Burma’s grinding civil conflict have been ordered not to support forces fighting for democracy.
At a meeting between Thai provincial governors, the UNHCR and non-governmental organisations, provincial authorities made it clear that any support for the democracy movement would upset bilateral relations with Burma’s ruling generals.
They said this could not be tolerated.
The Thai politicians alleged some aid organisations were providing food for ethnic soldiers fighting against Burma’s ruling military junta.
They also suggested the organisations were taking a substantive risk by travelling to border areas, particularly at night, in a bid to provide aid to those most at risk from the conflict.
The politicians suggested the proper process to manage visits to border areas was to contact the provincial administration for the area concerned and request access.
Tak Deputy Provincial Governor Samat Loifah went as far as to say he was not worried about aid workers dying or being arrested in dangerous areas, because the relationship between Thailand and Burma took precedence over any individual.
He also took aim at Mae Tao Clinic mobile backpack teams, who have been travelling in conflict areas in the midst of heavy fighting, saying they should cease and desist, because they were harming Thailand’s reputation with the junta.
Samat said NGOs working in the border areas should not overstep their authority or “imagine” that the Thai authorities were blocking aid.
But this is at odds with reality on the ground.
In fact Thai soldiers are turning back refugees fleeing across the border at gunpoint and police officers are demanding aid be left with them, rather than being taken to refugees.
A Thai special forces soldier attending the meeting with provincial governors said the Thais had “befriended” the Burmese Army and also had no problems with ethnic fighters.
Thai authorities are desperate to have the Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge re-opened, which has been closed since June 20 last year.
Local businesses in Mae Sot are smarting from the closure.
Observers believe if the Burma Army manages to quell resistance fighters in the area then the bridge may be allowed to reopen and that Thailand is assisting the junta’s troops in its mission by closing down cross-border supply lines.
In late January two combat journalists, John Sanlin and Pascal Schatteman, were arrested by border authorities and detained for four days after having repeatedly crossed the border to record fighting between ethnic Karen fighters and the Burma Army.
The arrests indicated just how lightly the Thai authorities are treading with the Burmese.
Interestingly though, the journalists had informed Thai military intelligence of their intentions, as requested, and were still arrested.
Thai military intelligence officers have since warned all foreigners they will be stopped should they try to cross the border and will be arrested if detected returning from Burma.
Last night at 6.30pm, Karen National Liberation Army Colonel Nerdah Mya said the border had become “very strict”.
“They are not allowing KNU vehicles to move along the border,” he said.

Restaurant bombing kills two

Daniel Pedersen

Mae Sot

Burma’s Myawaddy has again become an urban theatre of war, with two people killed in a bomb blast on Wednesday night near the Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge.

And witnesses said throughout the day on Tuesday they had heard sporadic gunfire from the Rim Moei Market, nestled on the riverbank directly opposite Myawaddy.

The Burmese frontier trading town became famous overnight on election day – November 7 – when soldiers of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army revolted against their Burma Army overseers, sparking pitched battles in the town’s streets.

Since then, the situation has deteriorated along the border as the junta’s troops seek retribution.

There are more than 10,000 refugees spread along both sides of the Moei River, human minesweepers are being driven ahead of Burma Army troops and hostilities are regularly spilling onto the Thai side.

Said a Thai military intelligence officer: “They’re [both Karen and Burmese troops] using Thailand like a guesthouse.”

Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, has ordered its army to embark on a major offensive to secure the border area in a concerted effort to open it up for trade.

The Burma Army has introduced 110mm GPS-guided cannons to the border area and is regularly plying ethnic army-held areas with as many as 200 120mm mortars a day.

It is firepower the ethnic armies of this region cannot match and significant base camps have fallen like dominoes in recent weeks.

Landmines, the main defensive apparatus used to protect their villages, have been detonated by mortar and cannon fire.

To protect themselves against landmines that have not been detonated by heavy artillery, the Burma Army imported 600 prisoners taken from state-run jails to walk in front of them, essentially as mine fodder.

Some sustained serious injury and were hospitalised in Thailand, their stories were corroborated by three escapees who fled across the border.

Soldiers of the ethnic armies, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army and the Karen National Liberation Army, have been left on the run, sleeping rough in the bush with few supplies.

The DKBA has so far borne the brunt of the Burma Army’s latest offensive.

Until the ruling junta’s November 7 election, the DKBA and the Burma Army had been considered allies.

But a revolt on that day by elements of the DKBA resulted in heavy fighting in the Burmese border town of Myawaddy, opposite Mae Sot in Thailand.

The ensuing onslaught in areas to the south of Mae Sot could be viewed as the Burma Army looking to teach its former ally a lesson.

But things have not gone so well for the Burma Army and it has still not managed to wrest control of the contested areas, according to interviews with former soldiers conducted by the Karen Human Rights Group.

One 17-year-old Burma Army deserter told KHRG: “Our camp was attacked and the ones who got injured the most were us, but the DKBA soldiers did not get injured a lot.

“There were around 500 to 600 soldiers when we started operations but the total soldiers who died by landmines or got shot were over 200,” he said.

He fled the fighting to save his life, he said.

evidence of crimes against humanity in Burma’s Chin State

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evidence of crimes against humanity in Burma’s Chin State

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‘Beyond Section 10′ is a portrait of one Karen refugee in the run up to elections in Burma. Although he lives in a Thai refugee camp he has also served as a soldier in the KNLA since he was thirteen. He has recently become a father and as an increased level of fighting looms in the coming months he is torn for the first time between his love for his people and a desire to see his baby grow up.

The film is designed to highlight the plight of the Karen people and offer an accessible, human face to one of the victims of a brutal regime in a nation under persecution.

Mike Garrod is an English filmmaker who has worked on documentaries and drama since 2000 for broadcasters such as BBC, HBO, Sky and Al Jazeera. He is currently based in Stockholm and London and has been coming to Karen State since 2009. The film is currently being edited in London and is expecting a release in the summer.

Mike is putting out an appeal for footage that anybody can donate to the film and is especially interested in the following: Burmese news stories about the Karen and ethnic groups in general. Burmese news stories about the 2010 elections. Burmese movies depicting the Karen or other ethnic groups. International media news stories about the ethnic groups/elections. Footage of the Karen discussing elections. Karen festivals or holidays (new year?). Karen singing/music. Conflict footage inside Karen state. Burmese military parades.

Please contact through this site or mail@mikegarrod.com.

Mike Garrod

Daniel Pedersen
Journalist

 

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

 

US President Abraham Lincoln, Clinton, Illinois, September 2, 1858.

 

In a city that has been described as the world’s largest brothel, Thailand Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Saturday told an audience in Pattaya that Mae Sot in northern Thailand would become a “special economic zone”.

This “zone” will combine Mae Sot and Tha Sai Luad (Mae Tao to the Moei River) municipalities.

The merged administration will be vested with powers to create laws that override national laws and regulations.

On the same day Abhisit made his announcement in Pattaya, human rights organisations marked anti child-trafficking day in Mae Sot.

It is an irony the two events collided, one a press conference to relay a “positive” announcement from a government in need of such proclamations, the other a low-key bid to highlight a tragedy that plays itself out every day along the Burma border.

Conservative estimates have more than 20,000 Burmese sex workers in Thailand at any one time and in 2000, Burma’s Federation of Trade Unions estimated that 80,000 women and children had been sold into Thailand’s sex trade in the preceding 10 years.

In laundries and noodle shops, in clothes stores and coffee shops, in foundries and factories, Burmese citizens, some mere children, carry out the menial labours of Mae Sot.

On the city’s outskirts, Burmese citizens provide the labour to make “brand-name” clothes that are shipped all over the world.

This translates into foreign revenue earnings for Thailand, bolstering its GDP figures.

Every one of the Burmese workers in and around Mae Sot is paid less than the minimum a Thai citizen is legally entitled to.

*****

Thailand’s Board of Investment (BoI), in its 2010 report “The Cost of Doing Business in Thailand” quotes the minimum wage for a Thai citizen in Bangkok at 206 baht a day, “but a little less than that in the provinces”.

Working six days a week, an unskilled Thai worker would earn more than 5,000 baht a month.

A starting wage for a Mae Sot domestic worker, possibly a girl as young as 12, may be as little as 800 baht a month – with a place to sleep and food part of her package.

Progressing to a restaurant or noodle shop, an entry-level wage – again with a place to sleep and food – is 1,200 baht.

However, both of these positions would involve work seven days a week, for as long as 16 hours a day.

For a man, unskilled labouring can pay about 100 baht a day, carpentry or construction work might stretch to 150 baht a day.

This is reality in Thailand’s newest “special economic zone”.

Many businesses would not exist should they be forced to pay Thailand’s minimum wage to their employees, and there would be no-one to do the work anyway.

But just across the Moei River from Mae Sot lies Burma, home to a vast human resource of 50 million-plus, many of whom are heading for Thailand to escape civil conflict and a ruined economy, seeking work that will pay much-needed cash.

Desperation erodes people’s self confidence, but their determination to survive is often accentuated when faced with situations such as Burma’s hopeless economic malaise.

This is where the apparent Burmese preparedness to labour at demeaning jobs stems from.

In Mae Sot Burmese workers constitute the bottom rung of the labour pool.

*****

The creation of special economic zones in Thailand is part of a major decentralisation programme the government has been forced to embark upon.

Constitutionally demanded, Thailand’s 1997 charter – penned during a period of humbling economic failure – requires that local administrations receive a 35 per cent share of the nation’s tax income by 2006.

That didn’t come about, and now tambon and provincial organisations, municipalities and the two special administration zones in Bangkok and Pattaya receive 26 per cent of the Kingdom’s tax revenue.

The constitution’s architects, in demanding a decentralisation of revenue distribution, sought to redress systematic failings made apparent during the 1997 economic meltdown.

On Saturday the Thai PM Abhisit pledged that required 35 per cent share would be achieved across the country within seven years, blaming the 2008 global economic turmoil for the delay.

That such turmoil came two years after the original constitutional deadline did not rate a mention in Abhisit’s Pattaya address.

*****

The Thai government’s Public Relations Department in October 2009 said cross-border trade with Burma amounted to 144 billion baht in 2008, about a fifth of Thailand’s entire trade with neighbouring countries.

The PRD said most of this economic activity was concentrated in Tak province, specifically Mae Sot.

The Tak Chamber of Commerce has been requesting a second bridge across the Moei River for years, citing its load limit of 25 tonnes as problematic.

Construction of that bridge has now been approved and multi-lane arterial roads are rapidly being built leading to the river.

In the meantime the road from Tak to Mae Sot is being expanded from two to four lanes and a railway line mooted.

The PRD also referred to development of a “one-stop service centre and logistics park”.

Abhisit said Mae Sot’s local administration would “be given some authority other local administrations do not enjoy”.

In reality the police and, to a lesser extent, the military control Mae Sot and always have done.

Regular sweeps of the market area by police net bribes to allow illegal migrant workers to avoid arrest.

Bribes paid by factory owners ensure police will not raid their premises.

Police brazenly sell illegal Burmese timber they have seized at the side of the highway leading out of town.

*****

Mae Sot is surrounded by multiple police and military checkpoints to the north, south and east and the Moei River to the west.

For a Burmese migrant worker without appropriate papers, moving in any direction from Mae Sot is impossible, so they are stuck with rock-bottom wages or no work at all.

Yet Thai people-brokers can arrange transportation to Bangkok for illegal immigrants looking or work.

In Bangkok, a starting wage as a domestic servant could be as high as 4,000 to 5,000 baht a month, plus food and a place to sleep.

If the person transporting the illegal worker is caught, they could face two years’ jail, a 50,000-baht fine or both.

The illegal workers would face deportation, landing in the hands of Burma’s endemically-corrupt immigration officials.

Passage to Bangkok usually costs a migrant worker about 12,000 baht – this often comes in the form of a loan, with interest, repayments for which are deducted from their wages each month, sometimes for years.

That Burmese workers are prepared to endure such conditions to escape Mae Sot says a lot about the rewards for toiling in the country’s newest economic zone.

But there is little incentive to become one of Burma’s legal expatriate workers.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) says the ruling Burmese military junta insists foreign workers pay a flat 10 per cent tax on their earnings.

And registered workers are also required to present 50 per cent of their entire earnings to their local Burmese embassy as “funds for their relatives”.

Migrant workers registered in Thailand must also pay 1,300 baht a year for public health insurance.

To register an employee, employers must obtain a worker-registration card from Thailand’s Immigration Department, a cost the employer often passes onto the worker by cutting their wages.

To register a foreign worker without a passport costs 1,500 baht.

*****

On the same day that Mr Abhisit announced Mae Sot would become a special economic zone, People Volunteer’s Association chief Thein Sen was at the knife’s edge of dicey negotiations.

The People Volunteer’s Association has taken several forms since it first came into being in 1994 as the Burma Volunteers Group.

It worked steadily under Thein Sen, a former All Burma Students’ Democratic Front commander, for 12 years helping migrant workers out of any and every fix they found themselves in until 2006, when it became an association registered in Thailand.

In 2008 it changed its name again, to the People’s Volunteer Association because, said Thein Sen, “it must have all the people, we must help everyone, we don’t want to divide people by nationality.

“We really are here to help everyone, Thai bosses, migrant workers, people stuck in the cycle of domestic violence, we come in and help, we come in and help mediate,” he said.

“Some of it is workers’ rights, some ownership or owners’ rights, some domestic violence, we arrange legal aid, we help apprehend people traffickers, we simply make a conscious decision to help people,” he said.

As Mr Abhisit declared that Mae Sot’s local government would become a law unto itself, Thein Sen was dealing with a gun-toting Thai farmer who had become a law unto himself.

Thein Sen said, after eight years working at the same Thai-owned farm, a Burmese migrant family had decided to leave and go back home.

They asked for their wages.

He agreed and asked them to get in his pickup.

Then he drove them to his home where he pointed a gun at them and accused them of stealing 20,000 baht from his sister.

Still at gunpoint, he ordered them to remove their minimal gold jewelry and hand it over to him.

Terrified, they did so, but he demanded more and threatened to kill all of them, all the while waving his pistol in the air erratically.

He held the family hostage and released one man to go in search of more money.

Hearing his tale of woe back in Mae Sot, another family handed over all their gold jewelry so he could have his family released.

When the second family became involved they let Thein Sin know about the situation.

Thein Sen was once a All Burma Students’ Democratic Front commander, used to settling issues with a gun.

*****

The All Burma Students Democratic Front was a product of a violent crackdown upon university students in 1988.

The junta is still paying for its brutality in the form of networks established worldwide to fight for democracy and unhinging the ruling military regime.

In the aftermath of the 1988 crackdown on protests by students the universities were closed and the students who remained alive made for Karen State, into the arms of the Karen National Union.

At the time the KNU and its military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army, maintained a substantial military base at the conjunction of the Salween and Moei Rivers, a safe haven for ethnic armies and the National League for Democracy, the pro-democracy movement headed by Aung San Suu Kyi.

The true death toll of the military’s shooting spree in the capital Rangoon shall never be known because it was obviously covered up by the military regime.

University students walked for days through the jungle under constant attack by their own “government” forces to reach a safe haven protected by landmines and KNLA soldiers.

*****

There is a direct bus between Pattaya and Mae Sot once a day, leaving at 6.30pm.

Summary executions
One KNU/KNLA Peace Council soldier was killed and five captured and summarily executed by the Burma Army near Phallu last week. The dead had their hands tied behind their backs and had been burned.
PHOTOGRAPHS: Thaw Thikho
Source: Democratic Voice of Burma

Firefights, shelling south of Umphang
The Karen National Liberation Army engaged a Burma Army unit between Umphang and NuPo refugee camp near Kwee Hta Ho on Tuesday, December 14, with as many as five Burma Army soldiers killed and another possible six wounded. The fighting took place with the backdrop of heavy shelling as the Burma Army unit advanced on the small village. More than 600 people crossed the border into Thailand. An Umphang local said the fighting could be very clearly heard and residents were frightened it could spill over the border.
Source: Daniel Pedersen

DKBA overrun SPDC outpost
On Thursday, December 9, the Democratic Buddhist Karen Buddhist Army made advances on the village of Phallu. At Phallu Lay, about 10km southwest of Phallu village they overran a Burma Army mortar outpost, killing a captain and wounding others in the process. The DKBA captured two 81mm mortar tubes, several shells and the commanding officer’s field notes. Soldiers first to the outpost said blood-drenched Burma Army uniforms were left lying around the outpost, suggesting a desperate withdrawal. Independent camera men returning from the scene said the Burma Army had taken heavy casualties and only one DKBA soldier had been wounded. The DKBA are expected to eventually take Phallu, while the Burma Army has retreated to higher ground. On Tuesday, December 14, the area was relatively quiet.
Source: Daniel Pedersen

Artillery focus on SSA South
Burma Army Forces reported to be setting up new artillery bases around Shan State Army South headquarters.
Source: Shan Herald Agency for News

Mass resupply
100 six-wheeled trucks loaded with weapons and supplies reported to have moved through Shan State Army North’s Lashio area above United Wa State Army territory.
Source: Shan Herald Agency for News

Mon State closed off
Chaung Zone Gate, a sea route into Mon State, closed by the Burma Army, in preparation for an attack on the Karen National Liberation Army from the rear.
Source: Independent Mon News Agency

Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot
It is time for Aung San Suu Kyi to place herself above politics and become an overwhelming figure of unity for greater Burma, the Karen National Union vice president David Tharckabaw said yesterday.
By casting herself in the role of stateswoman she would become more powerful and a greater threat to the ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, he said.
“She is a great leader and a very forceful figure, she can speak about democracy,” said Tharckabaw.
On November 7, the SPDC cemented its role in a supposed democracy with elections widely regarded as a sham, with large swathes of the country’s citizens banned from voting.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 65, walked free from house arrest on November 13 after the barricades from around her lakeside home were removed.
A large crowd gathered to welcome her release.
The KNU’s Tharckabaw said he personally felt the time was ripe for a reassessment of Aung San Suu Kyi’s tactics in pushing for reform in Burma.
“Personally, I think she can be more effective outside the country,” he said.
“She has sacrificed and suffered enough and this junta still has no respect for her, they could lock her up again tomorrow, it’s [Suu Kyi’s tactics] not working,” said Tharckabaw.
The75-year-old dismissed the prospect of a political vacuum developing in Rangoon if she were to leave the country and was upbeat about the future generation.
“In 20 years [since the 1990 elections] young people have become politically conscious and have built the capacity for a movement for democracy,” he said.
“Some people say they don’t understand democracy, but they want to get rid of the military junta and people must respect that,” said Tharckabaw.
The Karen National Union is an elected body representing at least seven million people and has been fighting for recognition of its people and a say in how its state is run since 1948.
ENDS

Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot

The great danger the violence that threatens to spiral out of control in Burma’s post-election period is that it will be painted by the ruling military junta as ethnic groups fighting one another.
And public perception is a keystone in how modern wars are dealt with at an international level.
At the moment intense fighting in Karen State, north of the military and administrative capital Naypidaw, is pushing tens of thousands of people across the border into Thailand.
It seems likely to spread across the country.
Burma’s ethnic peoples are little understood by the West.
And the Western propensity to link the nation’s future with that of Aung San Suu Kyi is a failing.
The world’s press, it seems, has a problem explaining myriad ethnicities existing together in a nation state cobbled together by an occupying colonial force long gone.
Its reticence to delve into Burma’s diversity is baffling.
One of the higher-profile news pieces to attract recent headlines is the fact the newly-elected parliamentarians’ right to speak has been stifled before parliament has even convened.
On Saturday December 4, it was reported that Burma was undergoing political change according to United Nations envoy to Burma, Vijay Nambiar.
But in fact, what Nambiar said was gradual political change might begin as newly-elected politicians vacated the seats they have not yet formally occupied.
“Government formation is taking place. I think there will be new spaces, new slots in the parliament which will open up for by-elections,” he said.
Nambiar added that this might provide “small opportunities for increasing the political space for a broader, inclusive involvement”.
It is a fact that the ethnics control and inhabit most of Burma’s countryside.
They live together and work together, mostly in Burma with the common aim to grow enough food to sustain them and collectively survive as peoples.
In different regions they have substantially different cultures, languages, national songs, flags and beliefs.
But they are not at war with each other and they are not at war with the Burman ethnic majority.
Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, is at war with its own population.
Aung San Suu Kyi is undoubtedly important to Burma’s future, but there is a future no matter the role in which she finds herself cast.
The “ethnic minorities”, as they are so often referred to, have democratic processes to elect their leaders.
In some cases their elected leaders represent as many as seven million people.
While Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest, the ethnic leaders have been talking to each other.
In fact significant dialogue has been underway since 2001.
All are keen to speak with Suu Kyi, to let her know their intentions, but their decisions taken in unison representing the people who elected them to positions of such responsibility will not be swayed by a single person.
That is not how a democracy operates.
The Karen National Union vice president David Tharckabaw says the Western media’s preoccupation with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is “interesting”.
“There’s sort of a messianic complex developed about her,” he said.
“It’s as if, if she dies, democracy will come more quickly – and it won’t.
“Too much of a personality cult is not good for anyone,” said Tharckabaw.
“It is not good for her, not good for the movement,” he said.
“But I don’t want what I am saying to be misinterpreted, and I can see that it could,” he added.
“I believe she has sacrificed and suffered long enough and with the junta still having no respect for her, well, it’s not working,” said Tharckabaw.
“I personally believe (and he insisted he was not speaking on behalf of any of the organisations he represents) that she should ‘come out’.
“I think she would be more effective if she came outside,” he said.
The prospect of Aung San Suu Kyi leaving Burma would probably horrify many activists in the West.
But they do not have to weather years devoid of social contact and an inability to take action against what is perceived as a great injustice to a great many people.
“She should put herself above politics,” said Tharckabaw.
He said by doing so she could become far more powerful, making herself a figure of great unity for the peoples of Burma.
“She could travel and she could speak about democracy,” he said.
ENDS

A group of rebel soldiers has given Sky News rare access to Burma ahead of the country’s first parliamentary elections in 20 years.

Critics say the polls, which are due to be held on Sunday, are a facade as the country’s military junta tightens its grip on power.

A US internet security firm says Burma’s internet has been taken down in a cyber attack ahead of the poll, raising fears the regime is attempting to control information going into and out of the country.

Tens of thousands of Burmese live in squalid refugee camps in the town of Mae Sot in Thailand.

Surrounded by barbed wire fences, conditions are prison-like but residents say anything is better than returning home.

Zabuda fled across the border to Thailand three years ago with her four children after government troops destroyed their village.

“They told us we had to get out to make way for a new military camp,” she said.

“I was still thinking about how I would pack all our belongings when they set fire to our home. We lost everything.”

On a nearby rubbish tip several Burmese refugee families live among the filth collecting waste for 50 pence a day.

When they come to the Karen villages, they will rape, they will burn and then they will destroy all the crops and animals. Then they leave behind land mines.

It is a measure of their desperation that they consider it a better life than the one they left behind.

“The army came and kidnapped my husband,” said Thwe Aye, who has worked on the dump for two years.

“They took him away and forced him to carry their equipment for no pay.”

Other refugees complain of beatings and rapes carried out by government soldiers.

After years of international condemnation over human rights abuses, the group of generals who rule Burma have decided to go ahead with the country’s first parliamentary elections since 1990.

But pro-democracy activists, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, are not optimistic.

The last time Burma went to the polls the people voted overwhelmingly for Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).

The military junta responded by ignoring the result and jailing party members.

This time around the NLD is boycotting the election, convinced it is a sham.

Under Burma’s new constitution a quarter of all seats are reserved for military officers while the two main parties are widely viewed as proxies for the current military rulers.

Foreign journalists have been denied entry to Burma to report on the polling but Sky News was given rare access to the country by a group of rebel soldiers.

From bases hidden in the jungles of eastern Burma, the Karen National Liberation Army is fighting for the survival of the Karen, one of several ethnic groups at war with the regime.

Their American-educated commander is Colonel Nerdah Mya.

With weapons dating back to the Second World War, his men are massively outgunned but they are determined to fight to the end against a government that Colonel Nerdah accuses of ethnic cleansing.

“When they come to the Karen villages, they will rape, they will burn and then they will destroy all the crops and animals,” he said.

“Then they leave behind land mines.”

The village of Oo Kray Kee was burned to the ground by government troops two years ago.

Karen soldiers helped rebuild it, and now guard it against fresh attacks.

Like millions of other Burmese the villagers will not be casting any votes in the election.

“They don’t believe it will bring any real change,” said Colonel Mya.

“Many of them don’t even know that they’re holding an election at all.”

Meanwhile, Burma’s internet has been hit by a major cyber attack.

The disruption started last month and has intensified in the last few days, US IT security firm Arbor Networks said.

The Burmese government cracked down on internet provision during the 2007 pro-democracy protests, preventing demonstrators blogging and posting pictures of the unrest and the response by the army.

It is not known who is behind the current outage.

But it is being caused by the country’s state-owned internet provider, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication, being flooded by data, known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

Arbor Networks chief scientist Craig Labovitz wrote in a blog posting: “Yesterday, Myanmar once again fell off the Internet.

“While DDoS against e-commerce and commercial sites are common (hundreds per day), large-scale geo-politically motivated attacks – especially ones targeting an entire country – remain rare with a few.”

Mr Labovitz said the attack was “several hundred times” more than enough to overwhelm the country’s terrestrial and satellite links.

Sky News

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Health and human rights in Eastern Burma

This report summarises the data of a population-based survey which was undertaken to assess the health and human rights situation across parts of four states and two divisions that comprise the eastern states of Burma as a whole. A former survey was performed in 2004, the results of which were published in the report Chronic Emergency, which focused mainly on conflict zones within Karen, Karenni, and Mon States. This report builds upon the methodology of and issues dealt with in Chronic Emergency, and covers a much larger geographic area, including southern Shan State and Tenasserim Division. In addition, this survey covers a wider range of political and conflict contexts throughout eastern Burma, ranging from areas of ongoing low-level conflict, to areas of fluctuating control and others controlled by armed ethnic groups which have a ceasefire agreement with Burma’s military regime

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Democratic Voice of Burma

Francis Wade

India and South Africa will take up a two-year membership of the UN Security Council next year but their appointment to the powerful grouping has concerned Burma observers.

They are among five UN member states, including Colombia, Portugal and Germany, recently appointed to the Council’s temporary seats. According to analysts, however, they have little leverage over the permanent members – China, Russia, Britain, US and France.

South Africa’s last stint as a Council member came under fire from rights groups after it voted against a resolution in 2007 condemning rights abuses by the junta in Burma. It did the same to prevent the Council from criticising the Zimbabwean government, and in both cases Russia and China had led the defence.

It is in the Security Council that some of the fieriest international debates over Burma have played out, with the chamber pitting two of the junta’s strongest critics, the US and UK, against its key economic and security allies, Russia and China. But while China has used its power of veto only six times, it is the US that leads the way with 82.

This conflict of interest could scupper any progress towards indicting junta chief Than Shwe at the International Criminal Court (ICC), an issue that has grown in prominence in recent months and which has received backing from key Security Council players, including the US and France.

India’s admittance will raise further concerns about the Council’s power to take any action on Burma. Delhi’s once-vocal condemnation of the junta changed in the mid-1990s to a policy of engagement, primarily to secure economic interests, and it has shifted its position to one of caution in criticising the generals.

“The fact that India and South Africa are on board probably means that the ICC issue is now further away than before,” said political analyst Aung Naing Oo, who claimed that the chances of indictment were slim in the first place.

“India is very close to the Burmese military, and they have a bigger fish to fry. They also have to look at the bigger picture: geopolitically, there are issues [other than Burma] that are imperative to India, and if it ever comes to a vote [on the ICC], I’m not sure that India will vote yes: they may abstain.”

South Africa has however been critical of the ruling junt, with comparisons made between its 1983 constitution, which looked to legitimise apartheid rule through only token participation of ethnic groups, with Burma’s controversial 2008 constitution.

South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Ebrahim told DVB that the transition to democracy that the junta promises after the 7 November elections cannot happen unless certain conditions are met.

“The [Burmese] government needs to create conditions for free dialogue, as well as releasing all political prisoners and lifting the ban on political parties and activists. Importantly, like South Africa, it should allow all exile to come back and participate in the dialogue.

Concern greets new Security Council arrivals